


From Dust

by Pkrmgc



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Pseudo-History, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pkrmgc/pseuds/Pkrmgc
Summary: Before he sets out on his calling, Paragon John Brosca writes his autobiography. To tell his tale and justify the many sacrifices that he made before the eyes of history.
Relationships: Brosca/Morrigan (Dragon Age)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. From Dust

From Dust  
Before he sets out on his calling, Paragon John Brosca writes his autobiography. To tell his tale and justify the many sacrifices that he made before the eyes of history. 

Chapter one: From Dust

There have always been those who have claimed that greatness flows from blood. The type of fools who comb the memories in hopes to find some secret proof that I was always of the highest caste in truth. Trying to find some reason for them to say that our success was fated all along because of a long lost ancestor who was of noble birth. 

It’s as if their simple minds just cannot accept that they have a former casteless as their paragon. Just as so many still refuse to think the sister of a common thug could rise to be the greatest queen we’ve ever known. Yet it is a rare fact that meets our preconceptions, for the truth cares not for the stories that we tell ourselves. 

Know this, Rica and I were born from lowest dust, the shattered remnants of what had once been cast of solid stone. Were it not for the crucible of conflict. There I would remain amid the dust, condemned to watch our species slowly die a death of thousand cuts from tainted blades. Upon a tide of blood I built our peoples future, upon the crumbling ruins of our past I took a stand. Judge me if you must with all your hubris- you’d be far too dead to do so if not for men like me. 

I was born in some dark nameless alley, or so my drunken mother said- I suppose she deserves some credit for not just leaving me out to die right then and there. I may not particularly like the woman, but in the slums you take what you can get when it comes to family. From what little she remembered of my father, he was apparently some two bit carta thug of grand bravado and small ambition, and that bravado got him killed out in the streets. I know the type, if not for Rica I might have been the same. 

She’s the one who should have been a paragon, or so I’ve always said: you sodding fools are damn lucky that Endrin takes more after her than his uncle, or his dad. She may not have slayed any dragons, but the noble’s games are a knot that even Shayle could not overcome with strength of arms alone. I’m a man of action, or so my propaganda man would say, but foundations of my cunning and my wit were laid by her and her alone.

Rica taught me to read and write with what little chalk and charcoal we could steal, hell she taught herself to do it when not one in fifty dusters could even do their sums. In turn I taught her how to dream of something more, I taught hate the boot that kept you down. Ambition makes for a hell of a drug, it puts lyrium to shame. At first we dreamed of freedom from hunger, even future paragons can’t pull meat from stone, but neither of us expected to rise so high in search of distant dreams.

Of course that road from hunger took me to the carta, half of dust town used to work for them: the rest just met the needs of those who did. Now? They work for me, but that time was years away from when a pair of urchin kids came to kiss the ground beneath the underboss’s feet in hope for some petty work for scraps and spider chow. And Beraht found a way to use us, for she was a beauty with a razor wit and I was a deadly with a knife, he never thought that we were more than met the eye until it was too late.

Leliana tends to overdramatize things in her bardic epic of my life, but here at least, she got things right. That very day I swore, with naught but stone as witness, that I would never go hungry again. 

I was foolish then, crude and forceful when I played the petty games of power beneath the city streets, yet I will wear those scars I earned with pride until my dying day. I fought, I bled, I was hungry, I was mean, and I learned. I learned how to stab someone in a way that keeps your clothing free of blood, I learned how to leave a rock in someone’s pockets so that they don’t miss the weight of pilfered gold. I learned how to bluff and kill and steal and lie, and how those lies keep the power where it is. I learned how to win, and that has made all the difference. After all, I am your Paragon.

The surface’s hunger for lyrium is endless, eclipsing even their greed for gold and gems, good thing too: without the carta’s trade our people would have to live off nugs and lichen ale. Stone forbid that the nobles pride in hiding from the sun might prevent them drinking the finest Orlesian wines and getting fat upon their topside beef and bread. Not that the bosses let me near those shipments, lest I offend the delicate sensibilities of those whose brand’s rub off after they leave. 

Me? I was the one they called for quick and dirty work, with a foolish brute called Leske for the muscle to my fox’s cunning and oh so many subtle knives. Once Sigrun got caught and joined the Legion, I thought I was by far the sharpest blade they had. I thought my talents made me indispensable and had the arrogance to match. I thought that if I got good enough, if I became a big enough name, then I could rise through the carta ranks and run things my way.   
What exactly did I do to earn those skills and reputation, you may ask? Look to the memories and try and see for yourself: I’m proud to say that the shapers haven’t even guessed at half the crimes I did back in those dusty days. To be honest, even I can’t say for sure after all these years, one pocket picked is much like another after all, and I never bothered with the names of those I’d killed…

I should have listened to Rica when she told me to keep my head low, a big ego just makes you a bigger target to those who mistake such petty things for true power. Beraht was many things, but he didn’t lead the dust town’s carta because he was stupid. He knew that I was planning to usurp him, how couldn’t he? I've never been subtle about my goals, back then I might as well have been a bronto in a house of finest glass. 

So he set me up for failure, ordering me to ensure the victory of a man he’d doped too much to walk, much less fight at all. Luckily for me, the fool was too much a lightweight to even put up a sham of a fight so Leske and I found him asleep before the match.  
I should have just slit the drunkards throat or seen the con and made off for the surface, but something made me stay my blade. I had always known that I was better than the puffed up nobles, I couldn’t miss the chance to rub it in their face.   
I had snuck past the diplomats to see the warden who had come to town and got an earful of Duncan’s speech to the upper castes about how all blades are needed against the evil of the spawn. He said that heroes could be forged from the scraps that others turned away.

The man spoke from experience you know, it’s a shame they didn’t listen, but then again even with the voices of a king and paragon behind that very argument there are those who still refuse to see. 

So instead of slipping into the shadows when the mission proved untenable, ambition stung and I donned the armor of a warrior and took my first steps into history.  
It was nothing special for a tourney, I just taught a bunch of noble fools and highborn children that war is not a game to play in front of cheering crowds. The darkspawn don’t have any more honor than I do, so it not like they should have been surprised when I kicked in their kneecaps and threw some powdered glass into their eyes.  
They lived: that’s more that most of those who fight me can say. I’d made it to the championship too and almost had a chance to duel that kinslayer of a princess, before that drunken fool that Leske was supposed to be keeping an eye on stumbled into the arena and fucked things up. 

I’ve won an unofficial proving or two since then, money was always tight during the blight years. But this paragon will have no games thrown in his name after that farce so many years ago. Perhaps it's petty of me, but if some young warrior wants to honor their ancestors then they’d go off and claim a long lost thaig.   
I have neither the time nor the inclination to waste an afternoon watching what amounts to a glorified sparring match. If they want to kill each other over honor then they can do it in an alley like the murder that such nonsense is.

Of course, there are a great deal of nobles who do care about the blasted things, and I had just made a lot of powerful people very angry at me. Removing the pilfered helmet with gravitas befitting the scale of my defiance, I stoically stood and stared the high lords down in silence. My only response to their outraged accusations was to spit a gob of casteless blood upon their oh so holy proving ground.

Its almost flattering how many guards they sent to apprehend me. Two dozen of the warrior caste’s finest sent against a single casteless armed with blunted blades, at least it would have been if they didn’t proceed to beat the shit out of me until I fell unconscious with my body hammered to a bloody pulp.   
I could have taken any three of them in a straight fight, maybe even half if I’d had a couple hours to prepare the ground. Yet all the worlds skill won't make a single man an army, and city guardsmen have a set of dirty tricks all of their own.

If most of those men happened to end up in the front of the charge towards the gates of Denerim then perhaps they were simply eager to test their proving skills in actual combat. Or perhaps I keep a good account of all the debts that I am owed...

That was the first of many times I woke up alone in a cell, though I wasn’t surprised the watch was nowhere to be found. The carta knows how to make someone disappear, having done the dirty job myself a time or two I knew that I was in for nothing good. But whoever assigned to search me must have been put off by my then abysmal hygiene.   
They missed no less than six lockpicks, two knives, and the garrote wire I’d secreted about my person. They even left me my boots, the amateurs, if any guard of mine was so careless I’d have them flogged with salted whips I tell you.

I didn’t give the jailor a chance to learn from his mistakes, my resignation from the carta was tendered in blood as I put the wire to use around his throat. After a rather more thorough search then he’d conducted. I stashed his body in my former cell and made plans for my escape. 

I could have made it out of there quietly, but where would have left Rica and I? While she had caught the eye of Bhelen by that point, it would be several months until he truly won her prince’s heart. So I decided to rob the carta, empty their vaults as severance pay for all I’d done. It's just my luck that Beraht was there as I opened up the door. After that it was only going to end in blood.  
He was the old lion to my young if battered wolf; you don’t get to where he did without quite a set of claws. But Beraht had spent too much time leading the carta from behind a desk and too little on the streets, and living close to hunger kept me sharper than my knives.

Before any of you young bucks start getting ideas I’ll have you know that there’s a reason why the darkspawn know to fear my scent. I might have left my prime, but thanks to warden training I’ve still got my speed and strength. This old dwarf’s still got another brooder hunt or two left in him, trying for a tal-vashoth promotion is just another way to die upon my blades.

I may have dined with kings, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost my hunger. The fire in my eyes just moved on to search for greater things in time.

In the end it was his pride that gave me the crucial edge: where he’d been watching for betrayal in the ranks, I’d been watching how he moved and fought. I saw his low blow coming and took the chance to cut his hamstring and send him to the floor. After that it was quick, and I took what gold and gems I could conceal and made my exit. 

I returned home to find the carta ambush I’d expected unconscious in what passed for our living room and Duncan calmly drinking tea with my sister around the fire. At least he had the decency to allow us our reunion before proceeding with the blackmail. The old Warden always was impeccably polite I’ll give him that.  
It was quite simple really; Duncan regaled me of the wonderful opportunity presented by the right of conscription. I’m sure it was just coincidence that he mentioned off-hand how. As a formal guest of Orzammar, he was duty bound to inform the city watch of any wanted men that he should see during his stay. 

It may surprise you, but on the rare occasion I am soundly beaten I make a point to admit defeat with grace. Knowing when to fold is as important as how to bluff or play a winning hand. There’s no point in throwing good gold off in pursuit of bad. 

Besides, amnesty sounded good after what I’d done: even the carta makes a point of letting wardens be. Short of giving up my name to join the Legion I had nowhere else to go. Rica got the gold I’d stolen, Duncan got my oath. The wannabe ambushers got tossed into the lava flows, and I got to see the look of dawning horror on all the sodding noble’s faces as the duster they’d reviled left the city as a warden.

There are those who have asked why the old warden chose me of all people to become his last recruit. There was a time when I wondered that myself. I don’t claim to know his mind, but I’ve made a point to learn his history. By all accounts he too was born from dust, a thief and killer just like me. Duncan was a man who knew that wardens did what must be done.

I think that’s why we didn’t turn back and head into the deep roads to find the fratricidal princess, as skilled a warrior she was said to be. It’s probably for the best, the wardens aren’t a place for princes, I doubt a pampered royal would have had the grit it takes to truly lead…

Authors Note: this fic is loosely based upon my summer 2017 playthrough of origins and this series has been in the writing process since. John Brosca is in many ways inspired by the Dresden file’s John Marcone and how a pragmatically “evil” character can end up doing things beyond a hero’s greatest hope. It is worth noting that this is not a crossover like Dresden Age Inquisition was however. I am sorry for abandoning that, but my laptop broke and the replacement can’t run inquisition, should I finish this and another story-playthrough of DA2 I may give it another shot. 

Furthermore, credit to where it is due, I took a lot of inspiration from GreaterGoodIreland’s superb fic Outlander while writing this. The retrospective narrative style in particular owes a lot to him. That fic might just have the best written OC’s in all of fanfiction, I’m just trying to provide a unique interpretation of the people and events we know from canon.

I thought about shipping Sigrun and the warden, but decided against it in the end. It's totally feasible for her to have met a casteless warden before canon though. She really is quite underrepresented in fanfiction to be honest, and was one of my favorite parts about awakening. Gallows humor ftw!


	2. Chapter 2: To Stormy Skies

Chapter Two: To Stormy Skies

The first thing that hit me on the surface was the cold, with a gusting wind as sharp as hunger’s bite. The only thing that Dust Town has to spare is heat from the lava flows below and burning refuse from on high. If not for Duncan’s foresight and his fires, I might have yet turned back to join the legion. If I was to spend my life against the darkspawn I could at least die warm.   
It was only then, while looking up. That I mistook the stars for yet another city high above my head and gaped in utter awe. 

What? It’s not like there was anyone going around teaching dusters about this kind of stuff. I’ve heard more than one surfacer insist that rock was not a thing that melts, despite the lava flows beneath their very feet. I learned a lot of things those early days, some simple and some not: it’s a long walk down to Ostagar after all. The wilderness makes for a different foe than cobbled streets. I’ve always been a city boy at heart, and I was utterly unprepared for the facts of life out on the road.   
Thankfully Duncan proved to be an able teacher in that regard, and managed to find the time to kick my ass a couple dozen times to get me in the habit of fighting foes beyond my size as well. Any topsider who has had to fight a Kossith can attest to the difference that a foot or two of height can make when things get down to blade to blade. I took to giant killing well, though my penchant for disemboweling foes is more a matter of height than cruelty.

In time we got to Ostagar, where I found myself unimpressed by many things, not least of which being the human king. The Orzammar Assembly is in many ways the political equivalent of the proving but, for all its pompous bureaucratic nonsense. It has prevented anyone as singularly useless as Cailan from becoming king: sometimes you need to cut a prince's throat for the good of the nation.   
His armor speaks for itself really, made of solid gold with more engravings than the statues of some paragons and not a single rune in sight. You could have fed all of Dust Town for a year with a fraction of what that ceremonial nonsense must have cost.   
Silverite? That at least is something that I could understand, it’s saved enough of my soldiers lives to be more than worth the cost. But gold? I’m no smith, but even I know that gold is only useful for jewelry and trade: not armor.

Naturally, I cut his purse while he enthused about the wardens, and went to town on his retainers. That’s just a matter of course, my years of practice paid their dues that day and more. My talents prevented a lot of noble’s cash from falling into darkspawn hands when the battle went to hell. Gold does the dead no good, where living mouths must eat. Duncan was a kindly man, and chastised me for it later, but he wasn’t foolish: he let me keep the money.

I met a great many people of significance that day, though unlike what Varric would have you believe, Neither Hawke nor Aveline counted among their lot. As noticeable as Hawke’s prodigious size may be, everyone still seemed to be a giant in my eyes back then. The Champion hadn’t yet acquired that massive thing he calls a sword and truly set himself apart.  
It’s a damn shame too, his talents were wasted working as a freelance merc for hire all those years, I could have used his strength against the spawn. Just as it’s a shame that Aveline survived to be a thorn in Kirkwall in the coming days...  
To be clear, it’s not their running that I fault. I’ve made tactical retreats enough to cut some slack to those who flee to fight again another day. Yet there comes a day in each man's life where he must decide for what he’d die for, to pick a foe he can’t abide. If they’d turned and joined against the darkspawn then I’d laud them with the highest praise, but with the very world under threat they’d dared not show their face. Hawke grew up, in time I proudly stood with him against the nightmares. Aveline is different: and let the light of history show this as her greatest shame.

Cowards aside, I met near half a dozen friends that fateful day: the source of countless memories since marred by pain if not regret, because regret’s the sort of thing that stops you moving forward. Regret means you would have done things differently, and I did the best I could. History will come to say whether my best was good enough: I tell it like it is.  
Just one of them’s alive today, the others lost to death, disease, or hostile hand: yet time goes on and here I stand. I think the one I miss the most is Hendricks, my faithful warden hound whose utter faith and trust I never did deserve. When my statue stands in glories halls, it will be with his image at my side. Two paragons, of man and dog, forever watchful in the darkest nights. 

In contrast, I doubt that any of you have heard of Daveth: in Leliannas song he comes and goes with scarce a word. His story isn’t mine to tell, but better that I tell it than it go unheard. For Daveth was a common thief like me, who had tried to pickpocket Duncan and was inducted to the wardens as a payment for his crimes. Yet he proved himself to be a man of remarkable conviction in what little time I knew him. Let the records know that Daveth was a warden and a hero, let the stone recall his name in high regard- for he died standing ‘gainst the greatest foe. 

There was some other guy too, but I never cared to learn his name. Some balding fool who thought a tourney win had made him fit for war. Knights have always made for shitty wardens from what I’ve seen, and he was no exception in his way. 

As to Alistair, he was somewhere in between the imbecilic knight and heroic common man. Though he cared not for fleeting glory, he never did let go of the special kind of nonsense they talk about in bardic songs and children’s tales.   
I respect Duncan to this day. But Alistair thought of him the way a puppy views his master, utterly convinced that the man was an exemplar of all that's good and right. Duncan took his secrets to the grave, but if he were a paladin then he would not have looked for men like me.  
Alistair was a damn fine swordsman, as solid a fortress bastion stood his shield: and if that was all it took to be a warden then he would have been a better one than I. And had we lived upon a softer world we might have been the best of friends, but the stone is seldom kind to softer things. 

The four of us must have made quite a sight, two scoundrels and two fools. Sent off into the tainted wilds on the eve of battle to find a trio of tattered treaties that may have long since rotted in the mud. All in all it would have made a good subject for one of Varric’s famous plays, until we found the spawn.  
It may surprise you to learn that this was the first time I had ever encountered darkspawn. As much as they have shaped our culture, for most of us at home the war remained a distant thing to be ignored. That complacency remains the warden’s greatest foe even to this day.   
I didn’t flinch for long, my blades were swift and keen. For all their corruption, monsters die like any mortal man when faced with dwarven steel. To be honest, I struggled more with the bog than with the skirmishers we fought. It's hard to be subtle with every step a knee deep squelch in sodden peat, I much prefer to fight on solid stone.  
By the time our motley band finally arrived at the crumbled ruins of the frontier outpost where the ancient wardens left their priceless treaties, I was exhausted, soaked in gory mud, and it was getting dark outside. And that was when I saw her…

Much has been speculated about the black-haired witch who accompanied me against the blight. I suspect that she finds it to be terribly amusing at best and inflicts a terrifying wrath on anyone unfortunate to speak such stories in her presence. Morrigan’s secrets are her own, even after all these years. I may know more than most, but I doubt they number but a fraction of the whole. 

She appeared as if a ghost, striding out amid the fetid swamps without a stain upon her. Smugly she asked us questions for which she already knew the answers: presumably to put us off our nerves. Only once her power in the situation was established, did she offer to take us to her mother: who had salvaged the treaties long ago.   
Such condescension would later prove to be the norm. But back then I would have put up with a deshyr’s smugness if it meant that I could get the papers and get out of that goddamn stinking bog. Having assumed command of the mission, largely due to Alistair’s typical spinelessness, I swiftly agreed. With a smirk on her face, Morrigan turned and brought our group to Flemeth.

Yes, that Flemeth. No, I'm not joking here. I can honestly say that I would rather not earn Her wrath by spreading lies, and I’m fairly sure that even Hawke would say the same. I don’t know how she knew that the treaties she recovered would prove crucial in the coming year.   
I don’t know why she singled me out. It was as if she knew that Daveth and the knight were going to die within a few short hours, that Alistair would shirk his duty in the days to come. I don’t even want to know just what the hell she is or what her goals are, I don’t want to know her power or it’s source. I am no coward, but there are things that wise men fear and Flemeth had best be first among them. She knew entirely too much about the future, and I’ve never liked the concept of destiny. It makes it seem as if my choices weren’t my own. At the time I most sincerely hoped I’d never see her like again, would that I had been so lucky.

We got back to camp with just enough time to grab some grub before Duncan called Alistair and I to the pre-battle strategic planning session. Though, as the gold plated royal moron was in charge, any pretense of actual strategy was soon discarded in favor of abject fantasy. Loghain did his best to talk some sense into his son in law, but it was clear that he’d been trying that for more than twenty years to no avail. You don’t have to be Paragon Thrawn to know not to try and countercharge a darkspawn horde when they outnumber you more than three to one.  
I’m not some master tactician. But looking back I can’t help but think that Ostagar was a battle that we could have won if we were smart. We had the high ground for our archers, we had chokepoints for our swords and spears, we had mages to wreak havoc on the horde. We had siege weapons for bringing down the ogres before they hit our lines. For fuck’s sake, we had Hawke, and Varric says the man is half an army on his own

Cailain’s reckless charge made use of none of these things and Mac Tir knew it. It’s a wonder that Loghain could talk the king into a strategy that would let him save half the army as it was. Alistair never got that, and I never saw it as a problem soon enough to ram it through his skull before it was too late. Ignorance is more dangerous than arsenic if it gets half a chance, but teaching tactics to a templar would become the least of my concerns in coming days.

As it was, Daveth went to the frontlines with Duncan and the knightly fool. While Alistair and I were sent off to the tower of Ishal for what was supposed to be a largely ceremonial lighting of the torch. Needless to say. With how the battle went I never saw those three again and the darkspawn were in the process of sacking the tower when I got there.  
Thankfully, we arrived in time to rally the few surviving members of the token garrison. So I sent one of the walking wounded as a runner to the Teryn to inform him of the delay. She was the lucky one, the rest of us had to fight our way through that god forsaken hellhole room by room. Backed only by the grim certainty that the spawn would soon be filling in behind us as we went upon our way. 

A warden’s life is one of sacrifice, but none of those who fought there at our side had sworn the same. Those brave half dozen souls who could have run with no dishonor, yet despite this chose to stay and die to save the world. I regret that I never got a chance to learn their names, not even of the young elven mage who saved my life upon those blasted stairs, but they were heroes to a man. May the stone be stronger for their presence, may their Maker welcome them to his side as heroes who have more than earned their place.

It took us more than half an hour to reach the signal, and the beacon was hardly lit when the doors below were shattered and we were overwhelmed. I got hit by half a dozen arrows before the darkness claimed me, though I like to think that I had killed at least half a hundred spawn before they brought me down. 

I don’t know why Flemeth waited until she did to rescue Alistair and I, or even how she managed such a thing at all. I wish that she had arrived in time to snatch a few more of us away from death or worse, I hope that none of those who fought with us that day were captured. Alistair claimed that he could see how Cailain died, how Duncan made sure he was avenged. I’m not sure if that was the truth or a delusion he made up so he could cope, I was too busy trying to cut a path downstairs and save myself to look. I never asked, and Flemeth wouldn’t say...

Authors Note: If it wasn’t obvious from the first chapter, John Brosca is a narrator with an agenda. If, for example, John admitted that Bhelen killed Trian to frame his sister it could be used to undermine all that he worked so hard to achieve. It's also why the joining is skipped entirely and he lies about the deaths of Daveth and Jory. Brosca has no intention of spilling warden secrets for all to read.

Likewise, it’s part of why the warden dumps the blame for Ostagar on Cailain instead of Duncan or Loghain. As the last surviving witness from the council, who exactly is going to say he’s wrong?   
Another inspiration worth noting is the Kingkiller chronicles, though I didn’t read them until about 6 months after I started chipping away at this.


End file.
